


Morning Coffee

by houseofcannibals



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Enemies to Lovers, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Rimming, Unrequited Love, slightly creepy dolarhyde?, will daydreaming about hannibal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-20 17:06:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13151124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/houseofcannibals/pseuds/houseofcannibals
Summary: Will Graham hates his job in the local coffee shop—except for the brief moment every morning when he gets to watch a handsome customer, Dr. Hannibal Lecter, enjoy his coffee. Too shy to ask Lecter out, he finds himself taking solace in an unlikely source when his usually antagonistic boss Francis Dolarhyde confesses his attraction for him. But even as things heat up between them, his thoughts are of someone else.I wrote this silly little thing for LeoiRossi on Tumblr for the Hannibal Holiday Exchange 2017. You wanted Hannigram and/or Will Graham and Francis Dolarhyde and I thought, fuck it, I'll try to do both. You also asked me to mash two overused tropes together, and my first thought was coffee shop AU and enemies to friends. There's probably some others stirred into the mix too; this one kind of got away from me. I hope you enjoy it!





	Morning Coffee

The handsome man in the tailored suits came into the coffee shop every day at  _ precisely  _ the same time: 7.10am. Even on a weekend, though on the weekend he did not wear the tailored suits, opting instead for comfortable sweaters that looked deliciously soft and undoubtedly expensive. In the winter, he wore plaid scarves and wool overcoats. His shoes were always impeccably shined.

He would sit in the same place every day, unless it was taken, in which case he would begrudgingly sit elsewhere and leave much sooner than usual. His preferred spot was a table by one of the windows, perfectly framed in the center of the space. Perhaps he liked it for the symmetry, or for the admiring glances he often garnered from those passing by on the street outside—or perhaps because it offered an unobstructed view of the counter, and the barista behind it. 

The barista in question was Will Graham. And if Dr. Hannibal Lecter was indeed watching him, he gave no indication of it. Will could never be sure—despite the fact that he himself watched Lecter almost constantly during the man’s daily visits. 

Will had begun working at Dragon’s Breath Coffee almost right out of college, still fresh-faced and optimistic enough to think the name was cute. The truth was, the owner, Francis Dolarhyde, was a strange guy who seemed to like dragons way too much. At least, that was what the other employees whispered. One of the girls said he had one tattooed on his back, but no one had seen it so they couldn’t be sure. Of course, the girls all claimed to have seen Mr. D (as they called him) with his shirt off; they’d giggle and whisper about it in their break. They all swooned over him. Will didn’t see the big deal personally, but maybe that was because he hated the store and everything about it. 

He’d wanted to work in law enforcement, but he couldn’t get past the psychological evaluation. Every year he’d give it a shot, and every year they told him to try again next year. He’d taken the coffee shop job to pay the bills until he finally got into the academy. That had been three years ago. Now he was tired and jaded, with a messy beard and a scruff of hair that the owner grunted at him to cut every other week, not to mention a general disinterest in every customer who walked through the door.

Lecter, though. Lecter interested him.

The man had started coming in about eighteen months ago, when he’d moved his psychiatric practice to a new building. This Will had found out much later, after Lecter had left his card behind on his table one morning—by accident, probably, though Will still agonized over the possibility that it had been intentional, and he hadn’t acted on it like a fool. Will had googled him. He would sometimes pass the building on his walk home (though in truth, it was a fairly lengthy detour) and hope to catch a glimpse of the man, to run into him by accident, share a few words that weren’t about wretched coffee… But it hadn’t happened yet. They only had the mornings. The coffee shop.

It was February, crisp and cool outside, and Will was waiting for Lecter to arrive. It had not yet gone 7am, but he was ready. The shop was busy was subdued; the early morning crowd of lawyers and businessmen rarely had a lot to say as they passed through to get their first pick-me-up of the day. 

Lecter’s table by the window was free. Will stepped out from behind the counter with a wet rag, and gave it a quick wipe. He shifted the two chairs flanking it until they were perfectly straight. He smiled.

“What are you doing?”

Dolarhyde’s voice in his ear made him flinch and drop the rag. For such a big man, the owner was capable of moving with almost preternatural quietness. Like a creature stalking its prey, Will thought.

He crouched quickly to snatch up the rag, turning to Dolarhyde with a cheery smile already plastered across his scruffy face. “Cleaning,” he said, holding up the rag.

At six foot two, Dolarhyde towered over him. His face was unreadable.

“Cleaning,” he repeated. Dolarhyde always spoke very softly, deliberately, as if it was a struggle to get every word past his lips. Will supposed it was. The scar betrayed where the cleft palate had been; it must once have been a terrible struggle to talk. That would explain why he talked very little, even now. Only when he had something of weight to say. 

Will empathised with the man, he did—in fact, he empathised with everyone; it was why he felt such a compulsive draw toward police work. But that didn’t mean he liked him. That feeling seemed to be mutual; Dolarhyde had treated Will with unflinching disdain since the day he hired him, and seemed to delight in sneaking up on him when he was doing something he shouldn’t be to scare the living daylights out of him. He scared all the staff, including the girls who fawned over his muscles and mysterious, brooding nature—but few seemed to draw his ire the way Will did.

“You have a customer,” Dolarhyde said, jerking his head toward the counter where a man in an off-the-rack suit was tapping his foot theatrically. “Get back to work.”

“Yes boss,” Will muttered, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. 

The man in the store bought suit was just leaving (without tipping) with his black coffee in hand when the clock on the wall struck 7.10. Will’s heart skipped a beat.

Dr. Lecter stepped through the door. 

Lecter moved with the poise and purpose of a man perfectly comfortable with who he is and what place he occupies in the world. Today he was dressed in a three piece suit, subtle plaid in soft greys paired with a white striped shirt. His tie was pale yellow, silk, with a lilac paisley print. His pocket square was pearlescent white. His hair was perfectly combed.

Will straightened the cuffs of his crumpled plaid shirt, and wished he didn’t have a big coffee stain on his apron.

“Good morning, Will,” Lecter said, as he stepped up to the counter. As he spoke, his eyes flitted down, as always, to the name badge pinned to Will’s chest, and the corners of his lips twitched up just a fraction. Will got the distinct impression that Lecter had memorized his name on the first day they’d met and was maintaining this charade just to fuck with him. And to his chagrin, it was working. 

“Good morning,” Will said. His mouth seemed to have gone very dry. He cleared his throat, suddenly unable to meet Lecter’s gaze, focusing instead on the rims of his glasses. “The usual?”

“That would be lovely, thank you,” Lecter said. He watched with keen interest as Will prepared the drink, though whether he was more concerned with watching Will or ensuring the coffee was prepared to his liking was anyone’s guess. When Will finally placed it in front of him, his hands were shaking so much from the scrutiny that a drop splashed over the rim and sullied the saucer beneath. 

“Shit,” Will muttered, flustered, then flushed. “I mean… Sorry. Let me clean that up. Or would you prefer a fresh one?”

He forced himself to look up, pushing his glasses up his nose. Lecter looked faintly amused.

“You have very little confidence in yourself, do you?” he said. 

Will’s cheeks, already flushed, turned crimson. His shoulders slumped.

“I’m twenty-five years old and I work as a fucking coffee boy. I can’t get into law enforcement because they have tests that detect instability, so I’m stuck here serving men who wouldn’t give me the time of day, besides barking their orders at me, and the highlight of my day… The highlight of my day come at 7.10am every morning, when a man who can’t even remember my name waltzes through the door and takes my breath away.”

It was what he wanted to say. What he might have said, in another world. But this was not that world. Instead he just stared at Lecter, his expression slightly pained and his lips slightly parted, until Lecter became embarrassed and lightly cleared his throat. 

“How much do I owe you?”

The words snapped Will out of the trance he’d found himself in. He blinked. 

“Huh?”

Lecter smiled, faintly. “I said, how much do I owe you? For the coffee.”

“Oh.” Will felt the flush creep down his neck, hot and shameful.  _ He must think I’m a fucking idiot _ , he thought.

“Four dollars,” he muttered, unable to meet Lecter’s eye. 

Lecter removed the bills and handed them to Will. Their fingers brushed momentarily, and Will flinched. He turned to attend to the register, glad for the excuse to look away. Lecter slipped his usual generous tip into the jar, picked up his coffee, and moved toward his table by the window. He did not look Will’s way again. 

The rest of the day was a bit of a blur after that. Will worked robotically, agonizing over the awkward encounter, which seemed to be playing on a continuous loop in his head, no matter how hard he tried to push it aside and focus. One of the girls was sick so he worked a double shift, and by closing time he was exhausted. Maybe that was for the best though. Maybe he’d be able to get some sleep without thinking about Lecter all night.

“What are you doing?”

For the second time that day, Will dropped the thing he had been holding—which unfortunately, in this instance, was a teacup. It shattered on the tile floor, sending porcelaine flying. He turned, an apology already on his lips, to see Dolarhyde standing in the doorway leading to the back office. The jacket he usually wore was gone; he wore only a tight-fitting white t-shirt which revealed every muscle and curve of his impressive chest. 

Will realized that he’d never thought of Dolarhyde as attractive until that moment, and wondered how he’d missed it. He saw now what the girls saw. The man was, he saw now, incredibly handsome—tall, dark, and muscular. 

“I—I’m so sorry,” Will stammered. He stared down at the teacup fragments, then at the towel clutched in his tight fist. What had he been doing it? Drying it? He couldn’t remember how long he’d been standing there. Most of the lights were off.

Dolarhyde stepped out of the doorway and moved slowly toward him. “Everyone else is gone,” he said in his hesitant, clipped voice. You shouldn’t be here.”

“I…” Will opened his mouth and then closed it. His shoulders sagged. Suddenly, he was crying.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, hastily wiping the tears from his cheeks, angry at himself. “I’ll leave now.”

He moved to get past Dolarhyde, but the man put a hand on his shoulder. Will felt a shudder ripple through him.

“I’ve seen the way you look at him,” Dolarhyde murmured. 

Will looked up at him, surprised. 

“It’s not subtle,” Dolarhyde said.

“It’s stupid,” Will muttered. “He’s so… refined. He’d never look twice at someone like me. I just make his morning coffee.”

Dolarhyde was looking at him strangely. Will couldn’t meet the intensity of his gaze.

“You’re very handsome,” he murmured. “Not very purposeful. But handsome.”

Will felt himself flushing for the second time that day. “Thanks.”

“He’d be a fool not to look at you the way… the way I look at you,” Dolarhyde said.

There was a slight pause. 

“You don’t even like me,” Will whispered, but suddenly he wasn’t sure. He thought about how the boys had pulled the little girls pigtails in the schoolyard because they liked them but couldn’t express it. About how Dolarhyde would watch him hawkishly, and snap at him when he noticed.

The man’s eyes were boring into him, and there was naked longing on his face. “I do. I didn’t know how to tell you. I want you. Do you… want me?”

Will’s breath hitched in his throat. He could feel himself getting hard. “Yes,” he said, truthfully. 

The next thing he knew, Dolarhyde’s lips were pressed against his, his hands clasping either side of his face. Will felt his back slam into a wall, and he moaned into Dolarhyde’s mouth, his hands coming up to unzip the man’s pants. It had been a very long time. He had been waiting for Hannibal, he realized, but Hannibal wasn’t coming and this was happening, and he had no desire to stop it. 

Breathless, Dolarhyde pulled away and ripped open Will’s shirt with his big hands. Buttons clattered to the floor. Dolarhyde kissed his way down Will’s exposed chest, his mouth finding one his nipples and gently sucking, teasing, until he had Will gasping. Then he pulled away again. 

“Do you want to see?” he said. 

“See what?” Will said, panting slightly. 

Dolarhyde pulled his thin t-shirt over his head, and turned round. Will saw. 

The tattoo on Dolarhyde’s back was huge and finely detailed. Will knew enough about art to recognize the Blake reference in the ink. And enough about psychology to know that this mild-mannered coffee shop owner probably had a few demons in his past to get something so elaborate, so steeped in symbolism and dark power. 

But he said none of this. In that moment, he wouldn’t have stopped what was coming if Dolarhyde had confessed a murder to him. 

“You’re beautiful,” he said instead. 

Dolarhyde kissed him again, deeply, pressing him harder against the wall. One hand began to caress his stiffening cock through his pants, and Will moaned. Dolarhyde unzipped them and slid them down, Will kicking them away impatiently as the man caressed him. 

“Against the counter,” Dolarhyde said, his voice suddenly very throaty. 

His pulse thumping, Will bent over the counter where he’d spilled Lecter’s coffee just hours ago. As he felt Dolarhyde’s long fingers enter him, slicked by his spittle, stretching him out, he closed his eyes and imagined Hannibal behind him—Hannibal, his jacket removed and gently folded over a chair, the sleeves of his shirt rolled up and his tie slightly loosened as he pushed two fingers inside of Will with clinical detachment, his face unreadable but a devilish interest in his eyes as he watched the man writhe and moan beneath him. Hannibal’s tongue pressing into him now, teasing the rim before moving deeper, igniting something in him that he hadn’t felt in years and making tears rise in his eyes. Hannibal rising from where he was kneeling, his hair unruffled even after thoroughly eating Will out, placing one hand on the smaller man’s hip and lining his hard cock up with Will’s ass, pressing it between the cheeks. 

“Are you ready?” Dolarhyde said, gutteraly. 

“Yes, please, I need it,” Will gasped, lost in the fantasy he had created. 

Dolarhyde pushed the tip of his cock into him, and Will groaned, his eyes screwing shut at the pleasurable pain of being stretched. He pushed himself back, impaling himself further on Dolarhyde, on the Hannibal in his mind, who chuckled and grasped him tightly by the hips and began to move inside him, gentle at first but quickly finding his rhythm, slamming into Will, who could do nothing but grip the edges of the counter and press his cheek against its smooth surface and gasp and scream with pleasure, with relief, with longing for the thing this almost was, but not quite. 

“Do you like that?” Dolarhyde asked at one point. 

“Yes Hannibal,” Will replied, lost in his own mind, his eyes still screwed shut.

Dolarhyde slowed only for a second, then began to slam into Will with more fervor than before, driven by his anger at all the looks Will had shared for Hannibal, never reciprocated, but never for him. He held onto Will and drove into him and wished this might be enough for him, that it wasn’t just a meager substitute for what he really wanted—for who he really wanted. And as he felt his orgasm rushing closer, he leaned over and bit, hard, into Will’s shoulder, branding him, until blood filled his mouth. Because he knew, instinctively, that this would be the last time. He wanted to leave Will with something to remember him by. 

If Will minded being bitten, he gave no indication of it. He moaned deeply as the teeth sank into him, his own orgasm taking him by surprise, his cum striping the counter even as he felt Dolarhyde spill deep inside of. He fell limp against the countertop, panting, his knees trembling. He felt Dolarhyde pull out, heard the man zipping up his pants. 

“Ask him out tomorrow,” Dolarhyde said, quietly. “Then don’t come back.”

He picked his t-shirt off the floor and stalked away toward his office without another word. Will heard the door slam behind him. 

Will lay there a minute more, getting his breath back. Then he pulled up his pants, fastened the solitary button left on his shirt, and gathered his things.

 

*

 

7.09. Will watched the clock, same as he had every morning since Hannibal first came in. But something was different. His face was clean shaven. His curls, freshly cut, were tucked away from his face, with the exception of one that tumbled roguishly over his forehead. His shirt was clean and ironed. He was smiling.

Dolarhyde had not come out of the office all morning.

The clock struck 7.10. Will waited, his heart thudding in his ears. 

7.11

He had never known Hannibal to be late. 

He sagged over the counter then and put his head in his hands, his resolve leaving him. He’d be here for the next three years and probably the three after that at this rate. Except no—Dolarhyde had told him not to come back after today. So he was out of a job. Single, and unemployed.

“Good morning, Will.”

Will looked up. Hannibal was standing in front of the counter, wearing a suit of muted charcoals, a tie of navy blue.

“You’re late,” Will whispered.

Hannibal smiled, a little puzzled. “Come again?”

“I…” Will floundered, a crimson blush spreading across his cheekbones. Then he found his resolve once again. “Would you like to get a coffee or something sometime?”

“I’d like a coffee now, as a matter of fact,” Lecter said, amused. “That’s why I came into this coffee shop.”

“No. With me. Would you like… anything… with me?”

Hannibal looked at him for what felt like a very long time indeed. And just as Will was about to look away, to apologize profusely and make his coffee, same as always, the man finally spoke.

“I left my business card on the table for you months ago. 

“What took you so long?”


End file.
